


Point Clear

by kla1991



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-01-04
Packaged: 2018-01-07 12:04:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1119623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kla1991/pseuds/kla1991
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helena visits Myka during a mission in Point Clear, Alabama. Season 2 fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Point Clear

This is not, some part of her still insists, strictly necessary to her plan. But the majority of Helena is barreling down the street in Point Clear, Alabama, toward the dingiest hotel on the coast, looking for Agent Bering. 

She had been headed to Fort Lauderdale, on the trail of the Corsican vest, when she spotted the young agent bickering with her partner. An artifact, apparently, was causing people to perceive colors in a way they never had before. Which sounded fascinating, really, except for the fact that three of the people affected had been hospitalized with head-splitting migraines and photosensitivity because of the intensity of their vision. 

Helena wraps her hand around the clue in her coat pocket and thanks modern lighting for being able to navigate at night. When first she had escaped the bronze sector, the constant light of the new world had pained her; there was no escape, no shelter for her eyes, no matter where she hid herself. But tonight the streetlights illuminate delicate Spanish moss dangling from oak trees older even than herself, and there are no stars, but there are twinkling lights twined around the pillars of old houses and wrought iron garden gates, a custom that, as far as she can tell, is meant to ring in Christmas. She had nearly forgotten about Christmas. 

Going into the hotel lobby and inquiring, with her distinctive face and accent, is risky (the entire effort is risky, but she has convinced herself it will be worth it), and she is saved the effort. Agent Bering is standing on a small balcony outside her hotel room window, staring out toward the invisible coast. Her hair is coming loose from its bun, and it gleams in the yellow light pouring out of the window behind her. It’s relief at the ease of finding her that draws a sigh out of Helena, she tells herself, and it is more of a warning than a fact. She picks up a rock from the ground and tosses it up so it clatters at Myka’s feet. 

The woman jolts when her eyes fall on Helena. She waves, grinning, but Myka doesn’t wave back. She shakes her head wildly when Helena motions for her to come down. 

Stepping back from the balcony railing, her face comes into the light. Her expression is worried, and she shoots a look over her shoulder when Pete’s shadow passes the window.

“Get out of here!” she hisses.

Helena replies, “Come with me. I have something for you.”

Myka shakes her head again, backing toward the hotel room door. Pouting and stomping had not been part of Helena’s plan, but doing it makes Myka pause. Helena starts hopping up and down, begging, and that makes the corner of the agent’s lips twitch up. Beaming back, Helena mouths, “Please.” 

“Hey Pete?” Myka calls over her shoulder, and she vanishes through the door.

When Myka appears through the hotel front door, Helena falls in step and keeps her peace until they clear the parking lot. 

“Bit tricky, this one. Isn’t it?” 

“We’ll figure it out,” Myka assures her. “Someone out there knows something, and I am going to find them.”

Helena smiles at the young woman, whose jaw is set and stride is long, and she revels in the blossom of curiosity that spreads across Myka’s face when she tells her, “Actually, she’s found you.” 

The wrapped object is in Myka’s hands as quickly as it’s out of Helena’s pocket and in the cool night air. Myka unfolds the paper napkins and keeps them between her fingers and the shard of glass she unveils. 

“This is the artifact?”

“I’m afraid not, but it may be the kind of thing you’re looking for,” Helena says. “It’s part of the screen from a color television, complete with the films which line it. Can you imagine, Agent Bering, my wonder at seeing color television for the first time?”

Helena has Myka’s full attention now, and when had she become simply Myka and not a Warehouse agent? There’s a breeze mussing the Spanish moss and the woman’s hair, and there’s sand grinding between the pavement and Helena’s boots, and the question posed goes unanswered. She leads Myka down a merrily decorated street in the vague direction of the gulf. 

“It had been dreamt of in my lifetime, of course, but no one knew quite how to do it,” Helena continues. “It’s been widespread now as long as you’ve been alive, but there was so much effort invested in it, so much innovation and inventiveness. And the possibilities!” 

Helena is nearly skipping with delight, but Myka is moving more slowly, holding the shard of television glass up to the nearest streetlight. When Helena returns to her side, Myka says, “I read somewhere that when color TV got to be more common, people started to dream in color. People who’d watched black and white television dreamed in black and white, but this…”

“It’s a completely new way of seeing the world.”

Myka turns her eyes from the glass to Helena and smiles. It’s the first time Helena has seen her do that, and she answers with a grin that makes her cheeks ache. She resolves to make Myka smile as much as she can, in the time they have left between now and the end of the world. 

Slipping the glass into her own pocket, Myka shrugs back up the street and sighs, “I should probably head back now.”

“Nonsense!” Helena protests. “You told your partner you were going for a stroll, did you not?”

Myka nods, hesitant but not quite mistrustful.

“But what’s a walk in Point Clear without reaching the water? You hardly even have sand on your shoes!”

“I don’t think I want sand on my shoes. It gets everywhere.” But she is following Helena down the street, toward the sound and smell of salt water. 

The waves, when they find them, froth and glimmer under the insistent lights of the city. There is a metallic clank of ships’ rigging, the groan of wood, and some things about being near water will never, never change. Breezes have grown to light wind, and Helena tugs her coat more tightly against herself, guarding her still sensitive body from the chill. Myka seems unaffected; Helena approves of the stoutness bestowed by Colorado blood. 

“Looks a bit like all the lights on the houses, doesn’t it?” Helena says about the water, and Myka studies the slivers of light that slosh from their feet to the horizon before she agrees. It’s magnificent, the way she thinks before she answers, as if there is a correct response and she has to make sure she supplies it. 

Myka is in the process of insisting that they should stay off the boardwalks and not touch the boats, because they belong to someone, and really, they probably shouldn’t be here at all, they’re liable to get arrested for trespassing, when something more familiar, more exact than the memory of the gulf at night, comes into view.

“Myka!” Helena says, jumping off the dock she’d wandered down and pointing to a roof just visible above ancient oaks that had once been so very small. “Is that the Grand Hotel?” 

“Yeah, it went up in 1847, and…”

“And I was here in 1899!” Helena cavorts across the beach toward the building, scrambling from the sand onto a red brick path and pulling Myka up behind her. It occurs to her in the moment while Myka steadies herself, before she lets go of Helena’s hand, that this is the first time they have touched each other in kindness. She turns away from the moment and toward the sprawling Grand Hotel. 

“A Spanish ship called the San Telmo had wrecked in the Drake Passage, near Antarctica, and the masthead washed up the coast and into the Gulf of Mexico. A fisherman brought it to shore and created the coldest winter in Point Clear history. Negative 29 degrees centigrade!”

Myka shivers. Helena smiles, then looks again from Myka to the hotel. 

“That case may have been the only time I was happy, after my daughter died.” 

It is so quiet, Helena can almost believe that the words are blown away unheard, but Myka presses her fingertips against Helena’s elbow. They walk along the path in silence until they reach the courtyard of the Grand Hotel. Helena stops, and Myka waits beside her.

“There are so few things in this country as old as I,” Helena says. 

“It must be nice to see something familiar for once,” Myka says. “You know, that isn’t in the Warehouse or an antique store.”

When Helena looks at her, she’s smiling, and Helena is ready to move on. 

Across the courtyard, the red brick path continues, and they follow it around the coastal point until it reaches sand again. The tide is changing, and Helena worries that she’s led Myka too far afield, but Myka clambers down from the path to the beach again, pointing at the young people with flashlight beams darting across the sand. 

“There must be crabs out here!” she calls, and she digs a tiny flashlight of her own out of her pocket. She spots a scuttling creature in an instant and dives for it. It zips past her into the waves, and Myka dusts the sand off her hands and laughs. 

“My dad says they’re called ghost crabs because your hands go right through them.”

Helena smirks. “Perhaps they wouldn’t if you came up behind the crabs instead of letting them get a good look at you first.” 

“Have you ever caught one?” Myka asks.

“Of course not,” Helena scoffs. “They pinch.” 

But Myka prods her into holding the flashlight, and after she snatches up two crabs within a few minutes, Helena has to try. She sets her eye on a tiny crab that is darting toward the gulf ahead of her. Helena circles, creeps up, and leaps, scooping two fistfuls of sand with the crab on top of it. There is no way to catch herself, however, and she scrambles to recover from her forward momentum. Myka catches her arm, but the crab flies out of her hands and hits the beach. It burrows into the wave-washed sand while Helena collapses into Myka’s arms, laughing. 

Sand, as Myka predicted, is everywhere on both of them when they catch their breath. Helena can feel it in her hair, of all places, and Myka is brushing it off the sleeves of her coat and the knees of her slacks. 

“I have no idea how I’m going to explain this in my field report,” she sighs.

“You don’t have to,” Helena tells her. “That’s not why I came to help.”

Myka’s eyes flicker over her, and she is Agent Bering again, sizing her up. “Why did you come to help, exactly?” 

“I just wanted to see you.”

It isn’t the truth until she says it out loud. Hanging almost visible in the salty air, it feels to Helena that these words were scooped out of her like the crab from the sand. The two women stare down, waiting for this truth to bury itself again. When it doesn’t, Helena clears her throat and begins her escape.

“Mind your eyes tomorrow, and good luck with your search.”

For a moment, Myka looks confused, and then she touches the glass in her pocket and nods.

“Right. Thanks for the tip.” 

Her jaw is set, but her eyes are soft. Helena turns to the gulf before Myka can look at her too tenderly, too closely, and find her out. While honesty is to her advantage, she murmurs, “Thank you for this. It’s good to have beautiful memories of someplace.”

Myka smiles, and Helena refuses to look, but she can hear it when she says, “Good night, H. G.”


End file.
